Once they were in the woods Albert slid Jennifer off his shoulder. Even being as petite as she is, carrying her for more than a few minutes would be more than Albert could endure. Grabbing Jennifer’s hand, Albert looked back at the road as they ran deeper into the woods.

"Whew," he thought to himself, "that was way too close."

Even though Albert thought they were far enough away to not be caught, he didn’t want to slow down. Jumping over rotted out tree stumps and being careful not to make too much noise, Albert pulled Jennifer along for what seemed like an eternity.

"Albert, we have to stop," said Jennifer, "I can’t keep going like this."

Albert didn’t want to stop. Heck, he thought to himself, Mr G might have sent more than one goon to get him. Feeling Jennifer slowing down Albert finally gave in and slowed to a stop.

"Geeze," Jennifer muttered. "It’s about time."

"Sorry if I was being a little paranoid," Albert said.

Albert looked around for a place to sit and found a rather large sized rock about 10 feet ahead of them.

"OK, now I need to know," Albert asked Jennifer, "Why would you fall for a get rich quick scheme? Why would you get involved with that cult?" Albert didn’t hold any promise that she would give any logical answer but he had to ask, he knew he was still in love with her. It wasn’t enough that he saved her from those creeps, he needed to know why she did it.

"I was trying to get information on him," Jennifer replied.

"What are you talking about?" exclaimed Albert.

"It’s a long story," replied Jennifer, "Let’s just say I have to do it for my father."

Albert sat there with a puzzled look. "What the heck was she talking about?" Albert thought to himself.

"Your father is involved with this cult?" asked Albert.

"No, it has nothing to do with him," replied Jennifer nervously.

"If it has nothing to do with him, then why did you get involved with the cult?" asked Albert, his patience wearing thin with Jennifer’s evasive answers. "Let’s just say it’s payment," Jennifer evasively answered again.

"Payment?" Albert asked angrily.

Sensing Albert’s annoyance and patience wearing thin, Jennifer looked up at him and smiled.

"I am working for the FBI and they wanted information on the cult. They knew I would do anything to protect my father so they "asked" me if I would help them in return for their looking the other way. My father means everything to me."

"Yeah, I know," muttered Albert to himself. He knew her father meant more to her than Albert did.

"So what do you get out of this besides being drugged, kidnapped and God knows what else?" asked Albert.

"They said they would be good to my father," answered Jennifer.

"Good?" questioned Albert. "I do not think that word means what you think it means."

"I really didn’t have a choice," answered Jennifer defeatedly.

"I know," Albert admitted. He knew her father could easily be taken down if the government wanted to. Instead, the government looked the other way and used Jennifer to do the dirty work.

Albert moved closer to Jennifer and put his arm around her as the surrounding air was getting cold and damp. Leaning her head on his shoulder, Jennifer closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. The drugs must have still been having some effect on her since she could not completely clear her thoughts. Her pulse began to race as she began to remember what Flagg had done while she was still captive. "Why can’t I get this out of my mind?" Jennifer asked herself. Slowly but surely she forced herself to push Flagg out of her mind and think of better times with Albert.

She nuzzled her head against Albert as she began to replace the terror she experienced with romantic thoughts she had for Albert.

"We need to figure out how to get out of here," Albert said. "We can’t just sit here all night."

Not what Jennifer wanted to hear. Will they ever be able to get back together, she thought to herself.

"So what do we do now?" asked Jennifer.

"If my memory serves me correctly we are near highway 78. I think we can start walking in the same direction we were walking and eventually hit the highway."

With a helping hand Albert pulled Jennifer up from the rock. Still a little woozy from the drugs and the harried trek into the woods Jennifer began to wobble as if she was going down for the count. Albert grabbed her before she fell, and in the process, pulled her close to him.

"Al," Jennifer said in a low, sultry voice, "You still love me!"

Albert knew she would be trouble, but he also knew she was hard to resist.

Jennifer stared into his eyes. Leaning closer, she closed her eyes and offered her lips to him. In an awkward move reminiscent of a teen prom Albert fumbled for words, but his lips did not move. Albert couldn’t take advantage of her in the condition she was in. It just wasn’t right.

Albert pulled away and said "we really need to get out of here."

Leading the way, Albert started to walk towards the highway holding Jennifer’s hand tightly. Walking as quickly as possible they managed to walk far enough to hear the distant sound of cars speeding on the highway. "It can’t be too far to the highway," Albert thought. Suddenly they heard a loud screeching sound. The sound only a speeding car makes when traveling too fast for the road conditions.

The pipes and construction equipment are mostly out of sight, and the dust is starting to settle, so I wanted to invite anybody in the community, whether customers of Genii Software already, potential customers, or simply friends and colleagues, who would like to come in and kick the tires a bit and see how our implementation of Genii Jam works. It will be live in the sense that all ideas and votes and comments will be kept (unless they start with the word "TEST:" in which case we can delete them for you when we go live) and acted on.

The look and feel will not be terribly different than IdeaJam, at least at first. Like this weblog, GeniiJam is integrated into the website, but that integration is part of what I would like to improve. Also, unlike IdeaJam, where all ideas comes from the community, we will be posting some ideas that either occur to us or have been posed through other methods, such as e-mail, the Support Forum or in person. This does not mean we don't want your ideas, we do, we really do! We just would also love your votes and feedback on ideas and suggestions we have.

Of course, like IdeaJam, registration is required, but I can assure you that both in the beta phase and later on, we won't use any personal information except as a way to follow up on specific ideas or comments which may require it. The only moderation will be to prevent spam. So, come on over, register and start telling us what we could do better. Don't be shy!

I didn't get a chance to post this yesterday, but it was a very satisfying day.

On the Elgiji (Genii Jam) frontGabriella Davis had everything working to the point where I could log in but got an error when I tried to submit an Idea. At first, I thought this was an IdeaJam software issue, but it turns out to be a dumb user error, with me the dumb user. When I tried to set everything up myself before consulting Gabriella, I had used the default NAB as the directory to store names and groups, even though I knew we wanted a secondary address book. When Gabriella took over that part and pointed to the secondary NAB she had created, she didn't know that I had already done things wrong first, so the groups were created first in the primary NAB and later in the secondary NAB. Since the groups were empty in the primary NAB, the ACL wasn't letting anybody save ideas. Once she realized, and chided me gently, she deleted the groups from the primary NAB and everything started working perfectly. So, Genii Jam is now working perfectly as far as I can tell.

But I want to give an additional tip of the hat to Elguji, because when they were helping Gabriella figure out what was happening, Bruce Elgort also noticed that we had not changed the default CSS file, despite that being in the instructions (who, me, read the manual?), and reached out via e-mail to offer any help with that which I might need. Excellent customer service, given that I had not even complained. I am looking forward to working with Bruce and crew, although given the experience thus far, I doubt I'll be needing to reach out much.

My plan is to start soliciting beta testers on Monday. Let me know if you are interested.

On the IBM frontEd Brill had posted an article about my experiences, and a couple of those responding suggested that it would have been cheaper to buy the Business Partner Value Package and use the Run Your Business license entitlements instead of getting the Utility Express license. While I posted a response there, I thought that I should address the subject in this diary to keep the information together.

When planing expenses, I tend to look at about three years of cost. So, as an experiment, what would be the cost of a Domino Utility Express license with renewals for three years? $2650 (year 1) + $690 (year 2) + $690 (year 3)= $4030. Adding in the cost of running my Notes client with an express option would add a bit under $200 for the three years, so let's say a total of $4230 total cost for three years.

What would be the cost of the BP Value Package for three years, with its Run Your Business licenses included? $2000 (year 1) + $2000 (year 2) + $2000 (year 3) = $6000 total cost for three years.

So, while there may be more benefits in buying the BP Value Package, the cost for three years is significantly less for purchasing the software directly. In addition, I would be a customer instead of a business partner, and there is a conjecture out that such a designation implies IBM listens more or responds better. Even if I am wrong, and it becomes clear, I have little to lose, since I could switch to the Value Package and save the $1440 or so in renewals for the latter two years.

I am not meaning to minimize the value of the Business Partner Value Package for many companies, but for a one person VSB with my particular focus, it is not compelling. The one part that is really not clear to me is how having access to passport will differ from the value access package for $795 per year. Since it confers no rights to run, but only to test, will I be able to get that same software through passport, or will I only have access to the Domino server? That is part of what I am trying to learn in this exercise.

After a long outage, vowe.net is back on-line. To celebrate, Volker put up a link to a Rolling Stones video of Jumpin Jack Flash, with the famous lyrics "It's alright now, in fact it's a gas." I thought it might be fun to post a different song that celebrates the moment. Perhaps on your blog you could find a video that reflects your emotion at the news.